October saw the announcement that former StubHub CEO Jeff Fluhr had launched a new esports squad titled Team Totality that has already emerged as a force for PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds. The team is currently training in Las Vegas, with Fluhr providing seed capital and serving as co-founder of the organization with CEO Shawn Barcal.
Cynopsis spoke with Fluhr and Barcal about launching a new esports brand.
Fluhr on learning about esports: Shawn is the one who tapped me on the shoulder four or six months ago and said that we should be looking at this industry as it was super exciting and a growing space. I took a look at it and while I had heard of esports, it wasn’t something I was paying a lot of attention to. He suggested that we go to Orlando for the Call of Duty World League Championship in August and it was a really interesting experience for me. I had never been to an esports event prior to that and I finally got to see it first-hand. That was all it really took for me to get interested.
On investing: We thought about a couple of different ways we could get involved, Shawn and I both have experience building technology-based products and we talked about doing something at the intersection of esports with that type of consumer product but ultimately, it felt like having a team would be the best way to immerse ourselves in the business and still have an opportunity to do some consumer-focused mobile apps or other things down the road. One of the things we are trying to do with Totality is that we want to get involved in products that are focused on the gamer community where we can either develop the products ourselves or take an equity position in someone else’s product in exchange for promoting it from our team.
Barcal on building a team: When we decided to form a team, we were looking at all of the established titles, and they all had long-established teams and legacies and then came along PUBG, which I enjoy playing and I started asking around about what organizations were getting into PUBG, salaries, etc. and I learned that not only was it one of the fastest growing games, but in Germany, the last big tournament drew around 700,000 viewers. Because this was a new competitive scene in esports, it seemed like a natural fit for a new team like ours to get into.
On building the brand: We have three legs to our stool. The first is a world-class esports team, the second leg is the to have the best media team in esports, so I am now building a great content team and developing lots of content. We have a YouTube Channel, a Twitch channel and a website we are launching soon. We’ve been filming a docuseries with them in Las Vegas for boot camp. We’ll have educational content such as how to play like a pro, frag like a pro, etc. We are plan to create a fun brand with both esports and social media stars who will be sprinkled in the mix as well.